A KILLER IS ON THE LOOSE

It is called meth, short for methamphetamine. It is readily available, cheap, and it is a poison that can inflict brain damage and death the first time it is used.

Is it a major problem in Chase at the moment?

"No," says RCMP Sgt. Fred Bott, "but it sure as hell is going to be."

Bott says meth use is epidemic in the U.S. and a growing scourge in Canada.

To alert parents to the potentially deadly threat, Chase Secondary School is hosting a special forum next Thursday, Oct. 6 from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Called Help - I'm Losing my Child, the forum features Marcy Williamson, prevention co-ordinator from Phoenix Centre, a drug detox facility in Kamloops.Williamson will present parents with the cold, hard facts about the destructive meth and destroy a myth about country kids being safer when it comes to drug access or use.

"Typically, when we look at where drug use is, it's the rural areas that have the highest usage of crystal meth," she says emphatically.

An amazingly addictive drug, meth is a deadly cocktail comprised of poisons like Drano, Lysol, rat poison, battery acid, and lithium removed from batteries. It is almost always combined with other drugs.

And that is part of the problem, Williamson says, referring to the recent death of a 13-year-old Victoria girl who thought she was buying Ecstasy. The one pill she ingested was laced with meth. It killed her. Her friends said it was the first time she tried "hard" drugs.

For $5 to $10 kids can get enough drugs to keep them high for 18 hours.

In the short term, meth makes users hyper and they go for long stretches without eating or sleeping."

"Some of the biggest users are young women who use it as a diet aid, or young moms because it gives them energy to keep going," says Williamson. "They don't realize how quickly they get addicted."

In the long term, meth use leads to depression and hallucination. Many users think they have bugs on them and develop running sores as the compulsively dig at their skin.

Because it's so toxic, the drug also oozes out of the pores, again forming sores.

"It can look like a bad form of acne," she points out."

Aside from the physical aspects of meth use, Williamson says problems are developing in the area of treatment.

While addicts are in detox, up to two weeks, they spend most of their time sleeping.

"Once they get through the detox period, finding beds is difficult, and not all centres will take people with history of crystal meth because there's been several episodes of violence, aggression and paranoia - about two to three weeks after they have detoxed. It puts everybody at risk," says Williamson.

As well as providing information to parents at the Oct. 6 forum, Williamson will answer questions.

"It's really all you can do at this point," she says. "There's no way to fancy this stuff up, because there doesn't seem to be a way back from it."Bradley says the school has held other such educational events where staff has substantially outnumbered parents."

"This does need to be a partnership," she maintains. "We can give the information, but it has to be supported at home. This is not just a Chase Secondary problem it's a community problem and we need to work together."

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An amazingly addictive drug, meth is a deadly cocktail comprised of poisons like Drano, Lysol, rat poison, battery acid, and lithium removed from batteries. It is almost always combined with other drugs.

Yup, more media bullshit. Methamphetamine is an approved
prescription drug in the USA. It goes by a couple of brand names,
and is prescribed for a variety of reasons. Nobody who takes it
dies with the first pill.

The drug war itself is what makes street meth so unsafe, and chiefly
due to impurities in the hastily made product sold on the street, along
with the non-standardized strength of the drug from batch to batch.

Not that prescription meth is not addictive, it is; but it is
considered relatively safe, and approved for human use as medicine, and
has been so for decades now, long before it's popularity began in the
illicit street scene.

Actually, rat poison (sodium flouride, I believe?) is in all the water supply & drinking waterin the United States too. A similar compound is added to toothpaste, 'cause both protect against cavities and plaque. This would lead me to believe that it is not a particularly dangerous chemical.

As bad as meth can be for your physical, mental, emotional, and social health this article is way ove the top and filled with lies.

Also, when claims like that are maid it makes me wonder if these reporters understand basic chemisry at all. When you perform a REACTION your end product is a new chemical, not a mixture of a the precursers. And battery acid? Lysol? Stupid fucking propoganda.

Meth can be a horrible drug and can do bad things to your life but this article goes above and beyond with some bullshit facts. The part about rat poision and such is what pisses me off the most. What I dont understand is the part where they say "It is almost always combined with other drugs. " Do they mean that meth is normally used in combination with other drugs, or that meth it mixed together with different drugs and sold as speed? What do yall think about this. It comes right after the part that says "An amazingly addictive drug, meth is a deadly cocktail comprised of poisons like Drano, Lysol, rat poison, battery acid, and lithium removed from batteries," so it makes it seem like they are saying it is mixed with other drugs and sold as meth. Thats totally false though. Meth isnt composed of battery acid, or any of that, those chemicals are just used in the reaction to yield methamphetamine. Ehh ohh well I dont like meth ne ways and its a pretty bad drug but not as bad as they make it out to be.

welcome to the matrix....they have become so hopelessly dependant on this facade of control and "drug-free" life that they will fight to defend it...they suckle whatever comes from the media's teet and take it as fact...politics and herd mentalityare the new opiate of the masses

I think this is just a very uncompetent/ dumbreporter which tries to express the opinion that 'meth is bad' by explaining things he or she doesn't understand one bit. Sad to say there are many articles like this. My mailbox is filled with articles like this every day. I usually select 1 in every 60 articles and post them here. It is very sad that major news papers & networks get away with suchuncompetent journalism. The drug war propaganda is partly to blame. But also in countries where there the drug war propaganda is less present, most journalistsjust do not know fact. And as long as the public does not know as well, not many will notice. A published article means income, so bullshit articles like this are a quick score.

and there's always something about the tone of these articles... always sensationalistic and using stupid metaphors... I hate being taken for a 6 year old kid to be frightened away. They should stick to trying to present actual facts in the most unbiased way...Information...

The pro-drug sects who promote the art of clandestine drug synthesis strive for accuracy and truth, and the benevolent legislators trying to "protect us from ourselves" strive to confuse, misinform, and intimidate the ignorant - with bullshit artistry revolutionary enough to dub this era a second Rennaisance.

The saddest aspect of it all is that the ignorant prey will swallow this shit hook, line, and sinker - no brains to damage in the fucking first place.